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Theater

Because a theater ticket is fairly expensive, blogs with from-the-hip criticism on theater by the everyman reviewer are scarce. Instead, the compelling blogs about Chicago theater are often written by practitioners. If you’re curious about the process by which theater gets made, follow along with these four.

Nikku.net/blog Sound designer Nick Keenan calls his blog Theater for the Future. Though the site is relatively new, his writing on the ways storefront theaters can benefit from collaboration and technology has quickly established him as one of the smartest voices in the theatrosphere (Is that a word yet? It is now).

Bdar.livejournal.com Neo-Futurist Bilal Dardai, who also contributes to the Neos’ blog (neofuturists.blogspot.com), used his LiveJournal to chronicle much of the writing process behind his new play, Contraption, which opens Saturday 26.

I-homunculus.blogspot.com Actor Dan Granata (a former TOC contributor) muses on the dilemmas of the performing biz; see also his occasional number-crunching posts about the statistics of the theater season.

Chainsawcalligraphy.blogspot.com If you want a real snapshot of the lives of most Chicago theater artists, check out the personal blog of playwright Marisa Wegrzyn, where thoughts on her work as a mentor for Pegasus Players’ Young Playwrights Festival or her inclusion in Louisville’s prestigious Humana Festival are side by side with stories about her shitty temp jobs. It’s also worth it for Wegrzyn’s always-droll observations, such as, “I turned off Bull Durham because life is too short to watch Kevin Costner act.

—Christopher Piatt and Kris Vire